convening to effect change.

The Center supports and hosts a series of events that bring together the human rights community to share, reflect, and explore tools to advance global justice and human rights.

attend our upcoming events.

Book Launch & Signing “Is a River Alive?” By Robert Macfarlane

June 2, 2025 | 5:00-7:00 p.m. | NYU Law D’Agostino Hall

The More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program is delighted to host writer Robert Macfarlane at NYU Law for a conversation on his remarkable new book, Is a River Alive? The event will feature a discussion between Macfarlane and César Rodríguez-Garavito, Professor of Law and Founding Director of the MOTH Program, followed by a book signing.

explore recent events.

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Event

More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) 2025 Festival of Ideas

Unfolding over three days, the MOTH Festival of Ideas will feature leading thinkers and doers working to advance the rights, interests, and well-being of nonhumans, humans, and the web of life that sustains us all. The Festival is organized by the MOTH Program at NYU Law. The afternoons of each day of the Festival will be open to the public, with tickets available for purchase. With creativity and interdisciplinarity at its heart, the Festival will include keynote talks, interviews, film screenings, book launches, poetry readings, concerts, and performances of various kinds.

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Future of Human Rights (FORGE) 2025 Gathering

Two days designed to provide human rights and justice advocates with a platform for dialogue, collaboration and innovation at a time of deep disruption for the field. In this 2025 gathering, FORGE aims to meet the moment by spurring engagement on 25 forward-looking projects that offer responses to current challenges and opportunities in the field. Strategic lenses we will be applying draw from this year’s concept notes including the Politics of Human Rights & Justice, Funding, Data & Technology, and Storytelling & Narrative Strategies. 

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Movements for Reparations: Racial Justice, Climate Justice and the Case of Haiti

Focusing on Haiti as an exemplary case, this event will bring together advocates and allies working in Haiti with leading race and international law experts to discuss growing movements for reparations. Speakers will address how the unjust impacts of climate change may connect to and reinforce demands for reparations for colonialism, slavery, and ongoing racial injustice, and the possibilities and limitations of international law to advance reparations claims.

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FORGE 2023 playlist

This global gathering of scholars, practitioners, artists, scientists, lawyers, policy makers, among others, differed from panel-based conventional conferences by creating spaces to actively share ideas and develop experiments for change that could transform the fields of global rights and justice. 

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Transformer States playlist

This series explores the digital transformation of the State and its impacts on the lives and rights of individuals, through in-depth interviews with practitioners and academics working on digital government and through blog posts by practitioners and scholars.

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CLX Series

Working with scholars, activists, and litigants from around the world, Climate Law Accelerator initiates and supports efforts that build the speed and scale necessary to spur action on the climate emergency within the limited timeframe left to avoid triggering extreme scenarios of global warming.

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Emilio Mignone series on transitional justice.

In partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Center provides a platform for distinguished speakers to discuss significant developments in the field. This lecture honors Emilio Fermín Mignone, a dedicated human rights advocate and leader.

  • Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
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  • Philip Alston, New York University
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  • President Juan Manuel Santos, former president of Colombia and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
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  • Pablo de Greiff, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence
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  • Sherrilyn Ifill, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
  • Darren Walker, Ford Foundation

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  •  Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Right
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  • Judge Thomas Buergenthal, Inter-American Court of Human Rights
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  • Hossam Bahgat, prominent activist in the Egyptian revolution
  • Helen Clark, UN Development Programme  

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  • Hon. Richard Goldstone, Constitutional Court of South Africa
  • Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict

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  • Cristina Fernandes de Kirchner, Senator, and subsequently President of Argentina
  • Judge Baltasar Garzón, Investigating Magistrate of Spain 

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  • Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 
  • José Zalaquett, former deputy Secretary-General of Amnesty International